Women in Biomedical Research

It has been a while since I’ve discussed the participation of women in research and NIH extramural programs, and following up on a recent workshop we held on the advancement of women in biomedical careers, I thought it would be a good time to revisit updated data and discuss issues concerning women in biomedical research. To quickly recap what we discussed in prior blogs, we have seen that in most instances women do well in competition for NIH research funding. For R01-equivalent grants, success rates are almost identical for men and women on type 1 applications with small, but persistent, disparity in success for type 2 (competing renewals) and research project grants overall. When we look at the representation of women, we see in recent years that men and women are nearly equally represented percentage-wise in training and career development programs. However, looking at representation as principal investigators (PIs) on research grants overall, we see women constitute only about 30% of overall research project grant PIs, and only about 20% of NIH research center and small business research program PIs. Another persistent trend is that far fewer women apply for NIH funding and it takes longer for them to return to apply for NIH funding. For example, a 2011 evaluation of NIH’s career development awards (Ks) found that of the K PIs tracked in the 10 years following their award, men applied for and received subsequent NIH grants at higher rates than women. But interesting...
Source: NIH Extramural Nexus: Rock Talk Blog - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Rock Talk Biomedical Workforce Diversity women Source Type: blogs